And Three Weeks Later
It's just been crazy of late, a lot of it good crazy, but crazy none the less. The editing job has become very busy. We're getting a new manuscript every day, and a lot of them are very good and so go on the to the reader panel (which I'm also supposed to be a part of), plus I've had a novella in edits that was just finalized. So that's kept me very busy. With my days so full of the job, it has been hard to find time to work on my own things, especially once the kids get home. Fortunately, that looks like it might be changing as early as next week. The tax return this year is really decent (the one advantage to almost no income last year) so I'll be picking up a "work" laptop, work meaning writing and editing. My desk top will remain my graphics/web work computer, and I'll probably be using it during the day before the kids are home from school, but once I have the laptop, I can extend my day and actually get more work done. At least that's the hope.
As for what I've managed over the last 3 weeks, chapter 30 is done, world building for Phoenix primarily (though there were some loose ends I finished up for A.C. as well), 2 shorts have been revised and one sent to my crit group while the other has been subbed—in fact a total of 7 stories have been submitted, and I've written 2 articles for the other editors that I lead. I've also had one weekend down because of problems with my DSL provider and have been fighting some kind of sick since the end of last week. Chapter 31 has been on my to do list, I just seem to keep having problems getting to it. Guess I should take care of that, huh?
I'm actually doing pretty good on all my goals for the year so far. Probably the worst category is finances, but that's to be expected. The return will help some with that as well, then we have to make the rest work. I've read 2 books so far this year, one while editing it, the other a published novel; my exercise has taken a different slant, but it is working even though most people wouldn't call it exercise (the fact that I see progress in my strength and stamina tells me it's working whether it's traditional exercise or not); my salt intake is way down, as is my PS2 playing (I've replaced it with reading); I'm averaging 5 days out of the week on feel good things; and I'm only 3k short of where I should be for my word count for the year. Hopefully I'll start getting ahead once I have the laptop.
So, in general, things are going good so far. Even with being sick right now, I don't have much to complain about. This winter has been relatively quiet health wise; the youngest hasn't even been hit once with her usual bouts of bronchitis which she usually gets 2 or 3 times through the winter. I do hate being sick, but hopefully it will continue to be a mild season for us and this will be the only time I need to complain about it. I just need to get a move on with A.C. Phoenix has been doing quite a bit of growing, but I'm finding it to be more my avoidance WIP at the moment, which is not necessarily a good thing, although it does help with that word count goal.
Speaking of which, I just finished doing some work on that tonight, and now I need to move on to A.C. Just need to push on through....
Or threaten myself with another short story. *g*